Ubisoft has responded quickly to backlash over its competitive shooter Rainbow Six: Siege.

The publisher had recently made two mistakes with the still-flourishing online game. First, they raised the base game's price from $40 for a Standard Edition to $60 for an Advanced Edition. Second, they included more loot packs with the Advanced Edition (for new players) than they gave away to veteran players who had been part of the game's community for years. In other words, new and old players alike were getting a bum deal and the community was up in arms.

Today, Ubisoft announced a few changes:

The $40 Standard Edition will remain a purchase option alongside the new price points.

Players who own the game and play an online match between now and March 6th will get an Ash Sidewinder Elite skin for free. You don't need to be a day-one veteran to get this.

Ubisoft also says they're working on ways to make the PC-only Starter Edition ($15) better in terms of grinding for Operators. "We recognize that this has been a point of frustration for new players, as well as existing players bringing their friends into the game, and have been working on how to make this process more fluid," the developer writes in a Reddit post, though they will not announce any changes until the Six Invitational which runs from Feb 13th - 18th.

This addresses the immediate concerns with the game, but leaves one big thorn in the side of the Rainbow Six: Siege community: Loot boxes, which Ubisoft added to the game last year. And with the Outbreak Event, loot packs can't be earned via just playing the game. You have to buy them with real money.

The loot boxes (called Outbreak Packs) are designed to not have duplicates, meaning that if you buy all 50 packs you'll get all the items available. And all the items inside are cosmetic only.

That's all well and good, but the fact that players can't earn these from just playing is a sore spot for many. In other games---Overwatch, Call of Duty:WW2, etc.---you can get loot boxes from various activities or just from playing and leveling up. You can buy packs but you don't have to.

On the one hand, having no duplicates is a great idea and makes these loot boxes better than many. But Ubisoft is really screwing the pooch by not allowing players to earn packs via play. That's a big no-no for both premium and free-to-play games. Frustration is abundant in the game's subreddit, and even the response to Ubisoft's latest change of course is filled with gamers upset by pay-only loot packs.

So while I commend Ubisoft on their swift response and clear communication---something a certain Destiny 2 developer could learn from---I can't recommend any Rainbow Six: Siege player spends a dime on these packs. It's not a fair system and the community should not support it with their hard-earned cash.